Code of Ethics for Nurses

The Code is an entirely new document produced for nursing ethics in the country, which was published in Farsi (10). It is also available through the website of MOHME (11). The English version is enclosed here as annex1. The target audience includes all nurses in the fields of nursing education, research, administrative, and clinical care, in the whole.

The National Code defines the values which are comprehensive and culturally-adapted. Then, it classify the ethical responsibilities as five main parts of “Nurses and People”, “Nurses and the Profession”, “Nurses and Practice”, “Nurses and Co-workers”, and “Nursing, Education and Research”, including 71 provisions in total.

The code sets out the required elements for ethical conduct and empowers nurses to make ethical decisions more perfectly as they perform as clinical nurses, researchers, administrators and policy-makers. It also reminds the nurses of the valuable state of their profession and what they should attempt to uphold as a nurse in providing direct care to clients/patients, teaching nursing students, performing research, and the supervision and management.

As a main general conceptual background of the National code, the patients are not considered as only people who receive the nursing care, and others including the patients’ family and healthy people in the society are considered in the plans and services. Another essence of the Code is that the individual dignity should be respected, regardless of who is receiving the care, or from which nationality, ethnicity, religion, culture, socio-economic class, gender, etc the patient/client is. Meanwhile, under the provisions of the National Code, nurses must recognize and respect cultural sensitivity in everyday practice, even in this era of globalization.

According the Code, the nurses should be sensitive to the ethical challenges and do their best to fulfill their moral duties. It also emphasizes the importance of informed consent, and addresses main ethical issues in everyday practice such as respect to privacy and confidentiality of patients/clients, relationship with colleagues, efficient performance of the professional duties, conflicts of interests, ethics in educational activities and protection of participants in research.

The Code also deals with the administrative duties of nurses. Moreover, it elucidates the concern of how the nurses should communicate with the hospital ethics committee for decision-making when are confronted with ethical cases.